Thursday, December 8, 2011

Small Business Survey: Group deals and "Pay-per-lead" poised for growth

The results from our latest installment of the Merchant Confidence Index survey are just in. We received over 2,500 responses from our small business members and we'll be "crunching the numbers" over the next few days to share insights into: 1) small business owners' opinions of the current economy, and 2) the adoption of new marketing channels by these business owners.

As illustrated by the super-cool infographic below, newer paid marketing channels like Facebook Ads and group deals are now part of the small business marketing mix, with local pay-per-lead poised for some serious growth in the near future.

Also surprising is the quick adoption of Google Offers relative to the "big boys" in the group deal space like Groupon, Facebook Deals (no longer around) and Living Social. Local business owners tell us that they plan to try Google Offers more than any other group buying service in the future.

7 comments:

The question asked was: “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?” Search Marketing (SEO + SEM) jointly got 43% of responses. Interestingly SMBs are giving up on traditional media advertising as their most important marketing channel. Note that the question was not asked to determine which is the best performing channel, but which channel to keep if you had to pick only one. If the question was about performance, I would say SEO and SEM would be at 70-80%, if not higher.

I think more and more business owners are starting to grasp the concepts of digital based marketing. It is no longer a "fad" like many thought years ago. The reality that it is a must is surfacing to the top.

Pay per lead is theoretically a great idea because you're paying only for advertising results, although the ROI depends a lot on the cost of each lead. PPL makes more sense than paying for every time your ad is viewed, though.